From the NYT:
Mr. Obama said that the compromise would take the Catholic institutions out of the equation by relieving them from either paying for coverage for contraceptives or providing any referral to their employees for the coverage. Instead, insurance companies would be required to pay for the contraceptives, and to arrange it. The insurers will agree, the White House said, because it is more expensive for them to pay for pregnancies than to pay for contraceptives.
If “the insurers will agree,” what is the point of the law? Wouldn’t they already be giving out free contraceptives if doing so reduced their costs? The Obama administration is saying: we are forcing insurers to take action X. They will happily oblige, because it is in their best interest anyway. This is paternalism, but it is an especially weird form of paternalism where the party being condescended to is actually said to fully understand the benefit of acting in accordance with the will of the paternalistic party. So the implication is that the party being condescended to (the insurance companies) are being completely irrational, since they refuse to act in (what they correctly understand to be) their own best interest unless forced to. Or am I missing something?
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